Bytefreaks.net – a place for hacks

Bytefreaks.net – a place for hacks

Using aliases for SSH

An extremely helpful feature of ssh is the ability to define aliases using its configuration files:

~/.ssh/config

/etc/ssh/ssh_config

~/.ssh/config contains configuration that is only available to your user and any user can create one for themselves./etc/ssh/ssh_config contains configuration that applies to all users of the system and only administrators can modify it.

Note: ~/.ssh/config should only have read and write access rights by its owner only!
Be sure to execute the following after your create it:

chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config;

Example 1 – Creating an alias for a host name:

Assuming we are too bored to type the full domain of a server, we can define a shorter name as follows:

Host bf
HostName bytefreaks.net

by having this configuration lines in your ~/.ssh/config file, you can shorten the command ssh bytefreaks.net; to ssh bf;.

Example 2 – Creating an alias for a host name with specific username:

In the next example, we create a new alias that not only will automatically set the host name but also the username

Host bf
HostName bytefreaks.net
User george

by having this configuration lines in your ~/.ssh/config file, you shorten the command ssh [email protected]; to ssh bf;.

Example 3 – Creating an alias for a host name with specific username and port:

In the next example, we create a new alias for a specific host name, username and ssh port number